Category Archives: CWIP

While electric bills still are tilted against local solar generation
and Georgia Power continues to levy its stealth CWIP tax for its
nuke boondoggle, yet solar power is rising this year on
Southern Company and Georgia Power.

Bret Wagenhorst posted on facebook 9 June 2015:

I find it decidedly ironic that a large portion of my last month
electric bill went toward paying for a nuclear power plant that is
hundreds of millions of dollars over budget, and which will no doubt
cost millions of dollars a year to run and to manage its potentially
deadly waste. I wonder if the money spent on the nuclear plant were
used to purchase rooftop solar panels for all certified energy
efficient Georgian homes if we citizens might not be better off in
the long run. Thoughts?

Batteries are just one of many reasons,
including electric vehicles, smart grid, solar and wind power
(including
pass HB 57 and you can profit by getting financing
for your own solar panels),
plus massive savings on health care and electricity bills;
batteries are one of many reasons that fixing climate change will
save us all money, clean up our air and water, expand our forests,
preserve property rights, and make some people rich:

In fact, a recent report suggests that revenue from the distributed
energy storage market — meaning battery packs and other
storage devices located directly at homes and businesses (many of
which now generate electricity through solar) —
could exceed $16.5 billion by 2024.
Another report predicts
$68 billion in revenue in the same time frame from the grid-scale storage market.
This includes large-scale battery packs, hydro-storage systems that
use cheap abundant electricity to pump water uphill to drive
turbines later on, or even solar thermal systems that store energy
as heat in molten salt.

And it’s all happening fast,
so fast your jaw will drop if you’re not paying attention.
So let’s stop talking about the costs of fixing climate change.
It’s not just
no-cost and free, not just in the future but right now;
we’re all actually going to be better off through fixing climate change:
healthier and more prosperous.

Would you trust a salesman of failed nukes to sell you a gas plant?
Is eminent domain on your property and your community “reasonable and prudent”
so Duke can make
another bad bet, this time on methane,
after Citi GPS and Edison Electric Institute and former FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff all warned them that solar is going to overtake every other power source within only a few years?

And while Duke customers will get refunds for permanently-closed Crystal River 3,
FL PSC also slid in a new tax:
“promotes community growth through economic development tariffs.”
A tariff is, according to Investopedia:

A tax imposed on imported goods and services. Tariffs are used to
restrict trade, as they increase the price of imported goods and
services, making them more expensive to consumers. They are one of
several tools available to shape trade policy.

Utility backers in the Georgia legislature tried scare tactics
to stop HB 657
(or anything else) from requiring more solar power from Georgia Power.
Still no solar tax, said citizens in
Savannah,
Columbus,
Gainesville,
Athens,
and now Atlanta.

The Georgia Power Co. rate hike proposal and suggested fees on solar
energy installation didn’t get a lot of support from residents who
attended a town meeting in Gainesville on Tuesday night.

The Georgia Public Service Commission is reviewing a $482 million
three-year rate increase request from the energy company that would
add about $7.84 to the average ratepayer’s monthly bill. The Georgia
Sierra Club and Georgia Watch has sponsored town meetings around the
state this month to let commissioners hear public input on the
request. Commissioners Tim Echols and Lauren “Bubba”
McDonald participated in the meeting at the Brenau Downtown Center.

Pursuing solar energy as state policy was also a hot topic at the
meeting, which was lightly attended. About 10 people spoke,
criticizing the proposed hike, the company’s proposed guaranteed
profit increase to 11.5 percent and Continue reading →

If Georgia was starting from scratch, it would not build a nuclear
power plant….

An analyst working for state regulators, Philip Hayet, said in
written testimony that the total costs of building two more nuclear
reactors at Plant Vogtle (VOH’-gohl) is more expensive than the
next-best option, constructing natural gas plants.

Still, Hayet said it is cheaper in most scenarios to finish the
nuclear plant rather than halt the project and instead build natural
gas plants.

But it’s not cheaper to finish a nuke than to halt it and
get on with wind offshore and distributed solar power throughout Georgia.

In Mississippi, the Southern Co. utility took financial losses when
the cost of building a new power plant went over budget. In Georgia,
another of the company’s projects is going over budget, but it has
not yet taken a financial hit.

Southern Company subsidiary Mississippi Power promised utility
regulators that it would charge its customers only for $2.4 billion
in costs for building a coal-fired power plant in Kemper Country.
Those customers will also have to pay off another $1 billion in
bonds for the project, though the utility cannot make a profit off
that borrowed money.

The utility’s deal in Mississippi has become a point of debate as
Georgia regulators consider who should pay for the increased cost of
building two more nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle (VOH’-gohl),
southeast of Augusta. Public Service Commissioner Tim Echols said he
wants Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power to consider a
Mississippi-style deal here, and Georgia regulators are carefully
tracking financial developments in Mississippi.

Echols said he was interested in the idea of a project spending cap.

“I’m sure when they made that deal they didn’t think they were going
to over the cap, but they did,” Echols said.